Throughout our company’s website we have six navigational elements at the top of each page. Seven if you include the logo that goes back to the homepage.

Websites like MJT Net have eight elements in their main top nav, with more than 30 more in drop-down menus.

Amazon switched from their top nav to the most confusing dynamic nav that I have ever seen. But it appears to work.

And the BBC news website has 30 main links on the left hand side alone.

So how many is too many?

I’ve met people who think that five, six or seven are the magic numbers. They believe that any more than that will overwhelm the website visitors, and leave them unable to find what they are looking for.

Yet websites such as Amazon, CNN, the BBC and hundreds of thousands of other believe otherwise.

The magic number is clearly the minimum that you need in order to serve your customers correctly.

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